How do I use variables in my .vimrc?

Question

I have a small problem with "tab size" and different project, some like 2 or 4 and the Linux kernel like 8 spaces per tab.

And this is not a big problem since I can just change a couple of settings in my .vimrc

set tabstop=4 set shiftwidth=4 set softtabstop=4 

But that is 3 lines I need to change...

It would be nice to have one line with a variable with the number 2,4 or 8.

A little bit like

let l:tabsize=4 set tabstop=l:tabsize set shiftwidth=l:tabsize set softtabstop=l:tabsize 

But this don't work...

Do you know how to fix this?

Thanks Johan

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Update: This solves my little problem.

let tabsize = 4 execute "set tabstop=".tabsize execute "set shiftwidth=".tabsize execute "set softtabstop=".tabsize 

Answer 1

you can't use variables on the rhs in the .vimrc.

try :help feature-list for more info. for unix vs windows for example (not sure what your projects are):

if has("unix")     " do stuff for Unix elseif has("win32")     " do stuff for Windows endif 

might work, or another example is

execute "set path=".g:desktop_path 

If g:desktop_path contains spaces, you will have to escape those, either in the original setting of g:desktop_path or when setting 'path', e.g.,

execute "set path=".escape(g:desktop_path, ' ') 

See

:help let-option :help execute :help escape()